Act 3 Storm still. Enter LEAR and FOOL.
1. crack your cheeks: Lear personifies the wind. If you imagine a person puffing up their cheeks with air, the image makes sense.
2. cataracts and hurricanoes: rain from the sky and water spouts from the sea
3. cocks: weathercocks at the top of the steeples, which turn with the wind. Lear wants the earth to flood.
5. Vaunt-couriers: heralds 6. oak-cleaving: oak-splitting
4. thought-executing: lightning flashes striking as quickly as thoughts flash through a person’s mind
7. Strike flat … world: flatten the world as if it were a pregnant woman’s stomach, destroying the life within
9. germens: seeds
LEAR Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!1 Rage! Blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes,2 spout Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks!3
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8. nature’s moulds: all the forms that nature has from which to make life on earth
You sulph’rous and thought-executing4 fires, Vaunt-couriers5 to oak-cleaving6 thunderbolts, Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ the world!7 Crack nature’s moulds,8 all germens9 spill at once That make ingrateful man!
FOOL
10. court holy-water: flattery and promises without any substance
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O nuncle, court holy-water10 in a dry house is better than rain-water out o’ door. Good nuncle, in and ask thy daughters’ blessing. Here’s a night pities neither wise men nor fools.
LEAR 15
11. I tax not you: I do not accuse you 12. subscription: loyalty
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13. servile ministers: slavish agents 14. pernicious: wicked
15. high-engendered battles: armies formed high in the sky
Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! Spout, rain! Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters. I tax not you,11 you elements, with unkindness; I never gave you kingdom, called you children; You owe me no subscription;12 then let fall Your horrible pleasure. Here I stand, your slave, A poor, infirm, weak and despised old man. But yet I call you servile ministers,13 That will with two pernicious14 daughters join Your high-engendered battles15 ’gainst a head So old and white as this. O, ho! ’Tis foul!
16. put’s: put his 17. headpiece: helmet/brain
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18. The codpiece … many: The man who finds a home for his codpiece (a pouch worn over male genitals at that time – the Fool means a man who satisfies his sexual desires) before he has a roof over his head will end up a louse-ridden beggar. This is how many beggars marry.
100 King Lear 30
FOOL He that has a house to put’s16 head in has a good headpiece.17 The codpiece that will house Before the head has any, The head and he shall louse; So beggars marry many.18 The man that makes his toe What he his heart should make Shall of a corn cry woe,
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